A paleta homérica

Having conquered since Antiquity the position of first Western author, Homer continues to deserve, in virtually all spheres of European cultural worldview, a referential space of undisputed centrality. From the expressive point of view, the reading of the Iliad and the Odyssey – encompassing both the most denotative components of the linguistic production and the most connotative of its symbolic aura – continues to cause, after almost three thousand years of re-approximation, the impression of a return to the inexhaustible primordial source. In this respect, it seemed particularly suggestive to us to propose as an angle of approach the expressive detail of the notation of colours. We are interested in verifying how this peculiar sensorial-rational apprehension, which pervades all human mental experience, appears translated into the poetic plasticity of the archaic Greek language. Simultaneously, we seek to understand how the Homeric notation of colour approaches or diverges from equivalent references in modern languages and in aesthetic research and experimentation within the visual arts. It is, therefore, through the detailed analysis of the lexical and semantic fields associated with colour references, and the symbolic transfiguration of the reality apprehended that they operate, that we propose to attempt the poet’s revisitation – in dialogue with the great philosophical and scientific questions surrounding colour and vision.